The next time you go to post a letter or package, there is a good chance you may be affixing onto that envelope or parcel a stamp bearing the image of the great Galway trad group De Danann.
An Post is using an image of the band on its new 55c stamp. Stamps have also been created with the images of Planxty, The Bothy Band, and The Tulla Céilí Band, in a new series celebrating Irish music and musicians.
De Danann were among the most important bands to emerge in the Irish folk boom of the 1970s. It was formed by Frankie Gavin, Alec Finn, Johnny ‘Ringo’ McDonagh, and Charlie Piggott. Over the years the band produced innovative music and was a crucial starting point for Dolores Keane, Maura O’Connell, Mary Black, Eleanor Shanley, and Tommy Fleming.
The band are among the very few Galwegians to be represented on the State’s postage stamps. Last year Frankie was informed by An Post that it wished to use an image of De Danann for the new stamps. Band members were asked to send in photographs for possible use as the image on the proposed stamps.
“I sent in a photo of the band taken by Tom Collins in around 1975, 1976 in St Stephen’s Green and Toner’s Pub,” Frankie tells me. “The final image used on the stamp is not from any photo in particular. The artist looked at them all and crated his own picture of the band. It turned out very nice and I’m delighted with it.”
The stamps were recently unveiled in the GPO in Dublin’s O’Connell Street and presented to the surviving members of the four bands.
“It was an amazing honour to be presented with the stamps in the GPO, given the buildings significance in Irish history,” says Frankie. “That my colleagues and I are represented is a great honour. My parents would be very proud if they could see it. All of us, though, felt the absence of Mícheál Ó Domhnaill who was in The Bothy Band.”
Prior to the euro, countries generally featured images of presidents, royalty, politicians, and the military on their currency. Ireland and France were different. Their backnotes commemorated each country’s artists, thinkers, and writers. The Irish notes featured WB Yeats, Johannes Scotus, and James Joyce, for example.
Today euro coins feature maps of the continents and generalised outlines of continental architecture. Postage stamps now play an important role in being a means for a country to acknowledge its greatest artists and musicians.
“It’s to An Post’s credit to do this and it’s a great tribute to the musicians involved,” says Frankie. “In times past traditional music would never have received such an honour. Times have changed and An Post recognises the value of Irish culture and music as part of what we are.”
So has Frankie sent any letters using the stamps yet? “I have a collection of the first day issues and I’ll give them to my nearest and dearest,” he says, “but I will be using plenty of them when I’m sending stuff at Christmas!”
Although Frankie has enjoyed great success with his new band Hibernian Rhapsody and solo, the stamp has convinced him to revive De Danann and there is talk of a show next year featuring Mary Black and Mairtín O’Connor.
